Mostly you hear about horror stories of people and their brushes with technical support and product repair.

Here I want to mention the fantastic service I received from the MP3 player people Rio.

My Rio Karma that I purchased last June suddenly locked up, I could not switch it off and no keypress was recognised. Luckily I had a pin and reset it, this turned it off. When I turned it on again it immediately locked up again.

Next I read the manual and tried doing what this said but again it locked up.

Now  Friday Afternoon  I sent an email to their technical support and on Saturday morning I received a reply, tried that, no help, emailed again and got another reply, no good, emailed again and this did not help either. He apologised and said I needed an RMA number. Please ring an (0207) number in office hours.

On the Monday I rang, the phone in London was transferred to the Netherlands and after a few questions was given the RMA number together with the address to send the unit to. I was told it would take up to two weeks.

On the Thursday of the following week a courier delivered a replacement Rio Karma. Yes it was within the warranty period  my word was taken on this  and I had to pay postage to the Netherlands £1.48, but this was how warranty claims should work.

Well done Rio, up till then I had never regretted the purchase and after such good service I still do not. I know it was a different unit returned as mine had a small scratch and this one was perfect.

I bought one of there mini-tower systems, an XPR-400 which to those that know show how long ago this was!

The system arrived as expected and everything worked fine for a couple of days and then the 17" monitor just died. No warning - it just shut down and refused to do anything.

I got onto Dell, who were very helpful and immediately sent out a replacement monitor. As it happened they provided a replacement with a better spec than the original. I'd gone for the basic 17" product - and they replaced it with an excellent Triniton tube monitor.

The computer itself is still gong strong almost 6 years later. Now equiped with 3 hard-drives, the latest a 160Gbyte devive, it forms a cental store for all our music and photos.

My more recent experience with Dell products hasn't been so good....... but you did ask for good stories!

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